It’s happened so many times before. Swimming. Ring HSPU. Dumbbells. So many CrossFit gyms do not follow CrossFit HQ programming and so many CrossFit athletes arrive unprepared for CrossFit competition. As Patrick Vellner points out, the programming of 2019 would have prepared you perfectly for this year’s CrossFit Games if you had been following it. But he, like most people, was not.
Athletes should know by now that you ignore HQ programming at your own peril. But it’s a sport of young athletes so many of them probably haven’t been around long enough to have learned that lesson.
This year’s Games stirred up a bit of controversy with the quick and deep cuts. Do I think they cut too many athletes too soon? Sure I do. I was disappointed to see so many of my favourites – Vellner, Annie, Ben Smith – eliminated so early. It’s unprecedented in CrossFit but it’s not unprecedented in sport. I come from the sport of Judo and at the Olympic level it is a single loss elimination. And a Judo match is won by scoring a single point. This means that every Olympics, half the Judo athletes who have dedicated their lives to qualifying, are eliminated after their first match which can end in minutes or even seconds when they make that one critical error. It’s unforgiving and brutal.
In the end, the top 2 CrossFit athletes prevailed once again. The game has changed but Tia and Matt proved themselves fit enough to weather and overcome the changes. Perennial greats like Katrin and Panchik finished just off the podium. There were some new names in the top 10 who might not have made it if the final cut had happened a bit later but there were a lot of familiar names too. Holte, Pierce, Green have all been improving year-after-year. And Haley Adams was a champ last year in the teen division. They all faced the tests put before them and prevailed. Change is always uncomfortable.
In other news, Obstacle Racing champ Hunter McIntyre who got the “Blowhard” spot to this year’s Games and, made it through the first cut but not the second, claims he is leaving OCR behind to concentrate on his new sport of CrossFit and he plans to return in 2020, this time by qualifying in the usual way.
The Games have wrapped and we have only a couple short months to prepare for the October CrossFit Open and a whole new season of Sanctional competition including our own 2020 CanWest Games at UBC in June!
